Seneca · a new plain-English translation from the Latin
Seneca to his dear Lucilius: greetings. I'm waiting for your letters to tell me what your circuit of all Sicily has shown you that's new, and to give me something more definite about Charybdis itself. I know very well that Scylla is a rock, and not a terrifying one for sailors at that; but whether Charybdis lives up to the stories is what I want written out for me, and if by chance you've observed it closely—and it's worth observing—let me know whether it's driven into whirlpools by only one wind, or whether every storm churns that sea the same way, and whether it's true that whatever is snatched up by that strait's whirl is dragged, hidden, for many miles and surfaces again near the coast of Taormina. If you write me all this, then I'll dare to ask you, in my honor, to climb Etna as well, which some gather is being consumed and gradually sinking, because it used to be visible from somewhat farther out to sailors. This could happen not because the mountain's height is decreasing, but because the fire has faded and is thrown out less forcefully and abundantly—for the same reason its smoke, too, is sluggish during the day. Neither is unbelievable: that a mountain being devoured shrinks daily, or that it stays the same, since the fire does not eat away at the mountain itself but, generated in some hollow deep below, boils up and feeds on other material—in the mountain itself it finds not fuel but a path out. In Lycia there's a very well-known region—the inhabitants call it Hephaestion—where the ground is pierced through in many places, and a harmless fire circles about without doing any damage to the plants growing there. So the region is lush and grassy, with nothing scorched by the flames, since they only glow with a mild, gentle force.
But let's save these questions for when you write and tell me how far the snows lie from the very mouth of the mountain—snows that not even summer melts, so safe are they from the nearby fire. You needn't credit me with this curiosity, though; you would have indulged your own obsession even if no one had asked. What will you give me not to describe Etna in your poem, not to touch this subject sacred to every poet? The fact that Virgil had already filled it up didn't stop Ovid from taking it on; nor did either of them deter Cornelius Severus. This subject, besides, has turned out well for everyone, and those who came before don't seem to me to have snatched away what could be said, but to have opened it up. It matters a great deal whether you're approaching material that's been used up or material that's been worked and made ready: it grows day by day, and what's already been found doesn't stand in the way of what's still to be found. Besides, the one who comes last has the best position: he finds words ready-made, which take on a new look when arranged differently. And he doesn't lay hands on them as though they belonged to someone else, for they are common property. Either I don't know you, or Etna is making your mouth water; already you long to write something grand, on a par with your predecessors. Your modesty won't let you hope for more than that—modesty so great in you that you seem to me ready to hold back the powers of your own talent if there's any risk of surpassing them: such is your reverence for those who came before.
Wisdom has this good among other things: no one can be surpassed by another except while still climbing. Once you reach the top, all are equal; there's no room for advancing further—you simply stand there. Does the sun add to its own size? Does the moon go beyond its usual course? The seas don't grow; the universe keeps the same condition and measure. Things that have already reached their full, rightful size cannot exalt themselves further: whoever the wise are, they will be equal and alike. Each of them will have his own particular gifts: one will be more affable, another quicker, another more ready in speech, another more eloquent; but the thing that matters, the thing that makes a person happy, is the same in all of them. Whether your Etna might collapse and cave in on itself, whether the steady force of its fires might wear down this lofty, conspicuous peak visible across the vast reaches of the sea—I don't know. But no flame, no collapse, will bring virtue any lower; this one greatness alone cannot be brought down. It can be neither advanced further nor pushed back; like the greatness of the heavens, its measure is fixed. Let us strive to raise ourselves up to it. A great deal of the work has already been done—or rather, if I want to tell the truth, not much. For it isn't goodness merely to be better than the worst: who would boast of his eyesight if he could only make out the day dimly? Anyone for whom the sun shines through a fog, though he may for the moment be content just to have escaped the darkness, still doesn't enjoy the true good of light. Our mind will have reason to congratulate itself only when, released from the darkness in which it now wallows, it has looked out on clear things not with a feeble squint, but has let in the whole day and been restored to its own sky, when it has taken back the place it was allotted at birth. Its origin calls it upward; and it will be there even before it's released from this custody, once it has cast off its faults and, pure and light, has darted up into thoughts of the divine.
This is what we're working toward, my dear Lucilius, this is the whole force of the effort we're aiming toward, and it pleases us even if few know it, even if no one does. Glory is the shadow of virtue: it will follow along even against virtue's will. But just as a shadow sometimes goes ahead, sometimes follows behind or trails at one's back, so glory sometimes goes before us and puts itself on display, and sometimes it lies behind, and is all the greater the later it comes, once envy has withdrawn. How long did Democritus seem mad! How reluctantly did fame receive Socrates! How long did the state fail to recognize Cato! It rejected him and did not understand him until it had lost him. The innocence and virtue of Rutilius would have gone unnoticed had he not suffered an injustice: while being wronged, he blazed into brightness. Didn't he thank his fate and embrace his own exile? I'm speaking of men fortune made illustrious even while tormenting them: how many men's achievements only came to public notice after the men themselves were gone! How many did fame not merely welcome, but dig up out of the ground! You see how greatly Epicurus is admired, not only by the more learned but by this crowd of the unschooled as well: yet he was unknown even in Athens itself, the very city he'd been hiding near. And so, many years after outliving his dear Metrodorus, in one of his letters, having sung of his friendship and gratefully recalled Metrodorus, he added this at the very end: that nothing had harmed him and Metrodorus, amid such great goods, so much as the fact that famous Greece had not merely failed to know them, but had almost never even heard of them. Wasn't he, then, found out only after he had ceased to exist? Didn't his reputation shine forth only afterward? Metrodorus too admits this in one of his letters, that he and Epicurus had not become well enough known; but that after himself and Epicurus, those who wished to follow in the same footsteps would have a name that was great and ready-made. No virtue stays hidden, and its having lain hidden is no loss to virtue itself: a day will come that will make public what was buried and suppressed by the spite of its own age. Whoever thinks only of the people of his own generation is born for very few. Many thousands of years, many peoples are still to come: look to those. Even if envy imposes silence on everyone living with you today, there will come those who judge without offense, without favor. If virtue's reward depends at all on fame, not even that perishes. It's true that the talk of later generations won't matter to us; and yet, even without our being aware of it, it will honor and frequent our name. Virtue has repaid everyone's gratitude, living or dead, provided he pursued it with genuine sincerity, provided he didn't dress it up and paint it over, but was the same man whether he appeared prepared beforehand or caught off guard and sudden. Pretense accomplishes nothing; a mask applied from outside deceives only a few, and only lightly: truth is the same all the way through. Things that deceive have nothing solid in them. A lie is thin: it shows through if you look at it carefully. Farewell.